A bit of a miscellaneous post here, more or less trying to catch up on readings and stuff to come back to:
- From the NYTimes Lens blog, “Chop and Crop,” which is a complaint by photographer David Hume Kennerly about how Newsweek reframed/reworked a photo he took of Dick Chenney. Basically, the original photo was a family picture of the Chenneys where Dick was cutting up a hunk of roast or some other sort of beef. The re-cropped photo,which appeared in Newsweek and accompanied a quote from Chenney about torture and such, zooms in on Chenney cutting up bloody meat. An extensive and interesting discussion, too.
- “Is the Internet Melting our Brains?” is an interview in Salon with Dennis Baron about his book, A Better Pencil. Spoiler alert: Baron’s answer appears to be “no.”
- Here and here, Henry Jenkins has a long interview with S. Craig Watkins about social media (especially Facebook) and about his book The Young and the Digital. Just skimming through the interview (which is in itself enough of a text to include in a class, especially something like 516 or 444), it seems like Watkins’ analysis is pretty interesting. Say, speaking of stuff like Facebook:
- The John Seely Brown Symposium at U of M on October 13 is going to feature an open to the public speech and panel presentation with danah boyd as the keynote speaker. I think I’m going to let my 12:30 class out early and head on over there.